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How to succeed getting kids eat vegetables

Wednesday 6 th November 2013

If your kids don’t like vegetables, you can try to hide them in another dishes they prefer or try topping with a home-made sauce (mayonnaise, ketchup, béchamel, tomato, etc).
You can try to find another way of cooking them that taste better for them: baking in the oven, boiling, steaming, grilling, frying, etc. Although steaming is, of course, the healthier way, it’s more important at the beginning to succeed make them eat the vegetable. Some time later, you can try cooking them in more healthier way.
Also, you can try different kinds of textures and presentations: puree, soup, small bits, grated, sticks, etc. Often, vegetable juice is well accepted if mixed with some fruit. You can begin with a juice made of carrot and apple.

More ideas are:

1.- Tomato sauce:
Tomato sauce is traditionally made with some onion, but you can add some basilic, carrot, etc.

2.- Meatballs:
Add very tiny bits of garlic into meatballs with some persil.

3.- Mayonnaise:
You can make a spanish “allioli”, that it’s a mayonnaise with some garlic.

4.- Cannelloni or lasagna:
You can stuff your cannelloni or lasagna with vegetables, for example, spinach, or a mixture of meat and vegetables such as carrot, onion, zucchini, eggplant, etc.

5.- Omelette:
Making spanish omelette with potatoes and chopped fried onions. Chop them thinly enough so that they do not realize that there’s onion inside, at least in sight, to hide onion taste is more difficult.
You can also add spinach, asparagus, zucchini, or any vegetable in an omelette.

6.- Chinese spring rolls:
You can fill spring rolls with chicken and any kind of vegetable.

7.- Pizza:
You can bake a pizza with vegetable toppings.

8.- Pasta:
You add to their favorite pasta very small chopped vegetables.

9.- Vegetable creams:
You can cook a vegetable puree and then add some sour cream. This is the case of the french vichyssoise, made of leaks and potatoes. You can also make zucchini cream, carrot cream, etc.

10.- Breaded:
Steam your vegetables and then bread them with flour or some dry bread crumbs turn into flour, and then fry them.


11.- Russian salad:
This is a mixture of small bits of boiled potatoes, green beans, carrots, green peas, together with some tuna (I recommend better mackerel), boiled eggs, olives and mayonnaise sauce.

12.- Gratin:
Gratin is a traditional french way of cooking some food, such as potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli, but you can do it also with any other vegetable. The traditional french gratin is made by topping the vegetable with some cheese and baking in the oven with the grill program, but if you can’t have cheese, then you can put some almond powder, coconut cream or béchamel sauce.

13.- Potato cakes:
Make some vegetable cakes with smashed potato.

14.- Vegetable spaghetti:
Use a julienne peeler to cut carrots and courgettes into fine strips and steam them for some minutes or just raw.


15.- Salads
You can create funny and beautiful salads with some decorations.


16.- Crepes
Make tasty crepes with grinded vegetables and some sticky ingredient, such as dates.


17.- Vegetable chips
Kale chips are really delicious, and carrot chips are very good too. You just need to dry them during some time in the oven at very low temperature or using a dehydration machine.


Finally, another trick is to give as a reward one tablespoon of some food that they does like, but still healthy, like potatoes, bread, crackers, cheese, yogurt, sausage, hamburger, etc., for every tablespoon of vegetable they succeed to eat.

Also, if you let them make their own salad and they have fun preparing their meals they will like to eat it too.

I also recommend you to search on websites about vegetarian food, they often give many good ideas on cooking vegetables in a tasty and healthy way.

Remember that the healthiest way to cook vegetables is steaming, so that’s the goal, and for the the salad, the more it’s cut the more vitamins are lost.

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